Introduction

In October, 1990, the United States Public Health Service published Healthy People 2000: National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives, which contained the details of where health professionals and other interested individuals wanted the country's population to be in terms of health outcomes and related behavior by the year 2000. The year 2000 targets were expressed in a comprehensive series of measurable objectives. In June, 1991, the New Jersey Department of Health, in collaboration with many other agencies and individuals, both public and private, issued its response to the national objectives in Healthy New Jersey 2000: A Public Health Agenda for the 1990s. An assessment of New Jersey's current status on a subset of the objectives contained in that document is included in this chapter.

The sources of the data used to assess the status in 1997 of the selected New Jersey year 2000 objectives presented in this chapter are the vital statistics files and communicable disease reports cited in the chapters in this publication specific to each type of data.